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Obama banks on 'no standing' decision

Eligibility case pending before appeals court

Bob Unruh joined WND in 2006 after nearly three decades with the Associated Press, as well as several Upper Midwest newspapers, where he covered everything from legislative battles and sports to tornadoes and homicidal survivalists. He is also a photographer whose scenic work has been used commercially.

One of the banks of attorneys assigned to quash demands for documentation that President Obama is constitutionally eligible to occupy the Oval Office is counting on a ruling that American citizens have no “standing” to demand that information.

The attorneys argued in a brief submitted to the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals that any injury to someone whose president is not eligible is the same injury for all people, so the individual has no legal standing to complain.

WND has reported on the case brought by attorney Mario Apuzzo in January 2009 on behalf of Charles F. Kerchner Jr., Lowell T. Patterson, Darrell James Lenormand and Donald H. Nelson Jr.

Named as defendants were Barack Hussein Obama II, the U.S., Congress, the Senate, House of Representatives, former Vice President Dick Cheney and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

The case alleges Congress failed to follow the Constitution, which “provides that Congress must fully qualify the candidate ‘elected’ by the Electoral College Electors.”

The complaint also asserts “when Obama was born his father was a British subject/citizen and Obama himself was the same.” The case contends the framers of the U.S. Constitution, when they adopted the requirement that a president be a “natural born citizen,” excluded dual citizens.

In a posted statement, Kerchner said, “What a lame and empty defense.”

He continued, “Basically they’re saying Obama and Congress can totally ignore the U.S. Constitution and there is nothing ‘We the People’ can legally do about it. No one has standing to right the wrong when Obama & Congress illegally violate Article II of the Constitution and seat illegally an ineligible person as president and commander in chief of our vast military power.

“‘We the People’ created the federal government and ‘We the People’ are going to fix this totally broken and runaway federal government,” he said.

According to Apuzzo, the defendants’ brief “is a presentation of general statements of the law of standing.”

“Appealing to what other courts have done, the defendants basically tell the court that the Kerchner case should be dismissed because all the other Obama cases have been dismissed. Its main point is that the Kerchner plaintiffs have not proven that they have standing because they failed to show that they have suffered a concrete and particularized injury,” he continued. “The brief does not even acknowledge our factual allegations against Obama which are that he is not and cannot be an Article II ‘natural born Citizen’ because his father was a British subject/citizen and not a United States citizen and Obama himself was a British subject/citizen at the time Obama was born and that he has failed to even show that he is at least a ‘citizen of the United States’ by conclusively proving that he was born in Hawaii.

“It is strange,” Apuzzo continued, “as to why the brief does not even contain these factual allegations within it, giving the appearance that the Justice Department does not want such allegations to be even included in any official court record. Nor does the brief acknowledge let alone address what all our legal arguments are on the questions of standing and political question. Rather, it merely repeats what the federal District Court said in its decision which dismissed the Kerchner case for what it found was lack of standing and the political question doctrine and asks the Court of Appeals to affirm the District Court’s decision dismissing our complaint/petition.”

The brief was signed by Assistant Attorney General Tony West, U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman, Mark Stern and Eric Fleisgi-Greene.

The brief informs the appeals court judges, “The district court correctly held that plaintiffs possess no concrete and particularized injury sufficient to satisfy the standing requirements… To establish such an injury, plaintiffs must show ‘an invasion of a legally protected interest which is (a) concrete and particularized and (b) actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical.’ Any injury based on an interest of this kind, shared among all members of the public, is ‘too general for the purposes of article III'”

WND reported earlier when the appeals court indicated it was listening to arguments in the case — granting special permission for an extra-long document to be filed.

“We maintain that Obama is not an Article II ‘natural born citizen’ because he lacks unity of citizenship and allegiance from birth which is obtained when a child is born in the United States to a mother and father who are both United States citizens at the time of birth,” he said.

“Obama’s father was only a temporary visitor to the United States when Obama was born and never even became a resident let alone a citizen. Not being an Article II ‘natural born citizen,’ Obama is not eligible to be president and commander in chief,” he said.

He also argues Obama has failed to prove that he was born in Hawaii by revealing his documentation.

“If he fails to do so, the alleged fact is not proven, even if the opposing party produces no further evidence,” he said.

WND has reported on dozens of legal challenges to Obama’s status as a “natural born citizen.” The Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, states, “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President.”

Some of the lawsuits question whether he was actually born in Hawaii, as he insists. If he was born out of the country, Obama’s American mother, the suits contend, was too young at the time of his birth to confer American citizenship to her son under the law at the time.

Other challenges have focused on Obama’s citizenship through his father, a Kenyan subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom at the time of his birth, thus making him a dual citizen. The cases contend the framers of the Constitution excluded dual citizens from qualifying as natural born. And still others contend he holds Indonesian citizenship from his childhood living there.

Adding fuel to the fire is Obama’s persistent refusal to release documents that could provide answers and the appointment – at a cost confirmed to be at least $1.7 million – of myriad lawyers to defend against all requests for his documentation. While his supporters cite an online version of a “Certification of Live Birth” from Hawaii as his birth verification, critics point out such documents actually were issued for children not born in the state.

WND also has reported that among the documentation not yet available for Obama includes his kindergarten records, Punahou school records, Occidental College records, Columbia University records, Columbia thesis, Harvard Law School records, Harvard Law Review articles, scholarly articles from the University of Chicago, passport, medical records, files from his years as an Illinois state senator, his Illinois State Bar Association records, any baptism records and his adoption records.

The “certification of live birth” posted online and widely touted as “Obama’s birth certificate” does not in any way prove he was born in Hawaii, since the same “short-form” document is easily obtainable for children not born in Hawaii. The true “long-form” birth certificate – which includes information such as the name of the birth hospital and attending physician – is the only document that can prove Obama was born in Hawaii, but to date he has not permitted its release for public or press scrutiny.

Oddly, though congressional hearings were held to determine whether Sen. John McCain was constitutionally eligible to be president as a “natural born citizen,” no controlling legal authority ever sought to verify Obama’s claim to a Hawaiian birth.